Today’s jobless claims report indicated that both initial unemployment increase slightly while continued unemployment claims went flat as seasonally adjusted initial claims remained just below the closely watched 400K level.

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increased by 4,000 to 367,000 claims from a revised 363,000 claims for the prior week while seasonally adjusted “continued” went flat 3.281 million resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.6%.

Since the middle of 2008 though, two federal government sponsored “extended” unemployment benefit programs (the “extended benefits” and “EUC 2008” from recent legislation) have been picking up claimants that have fallen off of the traditional unemployment benefits rolls.

Currently there are some 2.14 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 2.84 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 5.00 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.

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